I don’t know about you but I constantly keep hearing the word ‘austerity’ in connection with government spending. Phrases like ‘the age of austerity’ and ‘we are having to do this because of the austerity measures’ abound.
I thought it might be useful therefore to just look at what the projections are for Public Sector Spending over the next few years. From £682.3 billion this year it increases every year until it reaches £767 billion in 2020-21. I think is worth asking those who argue for ‘an end to austerity’ how much more they would like to increase spending by!

The above figures are for day to day spending – current expenditure. The same picture of increased spending also applies to capital expenditure. This increases from £73.4 million in the current year to £90.2 billion in 2020-21.

What the government is doing is reducing the rate of increase in overall public spending. Because of the increases in health and security spending day to day spending is being reduced in some other departments and I will continue to look at each of the departments in the days and weeks ahead.